There is playing of great beauty and power in the Unfinished, as you'd expect, excepting the slightly ragged chording in the first movement's final bars. I hope it's not the jaded critic in me but I expect a bit more from the Unfinished than consummate execution; something more that reflects Schubert's troubled state of mind at the time of its composition. Taken at a very moderate allegro Muti's first movement lacks tension, a tangible sense of the composer contending with forces beyond his control. You may feel that Kleiber's 1979 DG version with the same orchestra is enacting a twentieth-century psychodrama here, but the intensity of the playing rivets the attention from the very first bars, which Muti's does not, despite the fabulous pianissimo.
Muti is tough and urgent in the opening movement of the youthful First Symphony. Like Abbado in his Gramophone Award-winning set of the complete symphonies on DG, he ignores the high trumpets in the introduction, but his first violins, unlike Abbado's, sound unceremoniously pushed up the first subject's rising scales. Abbado also manages to find more introspection in the Andante. Muti's finale is, again, fast and here there is the unmistakable feel of the Viennese under orders. How much more fun the Chamber Orchestra of Europe seem to be having with this movement's Haydnesque wit and high spirits.
Muti takes the repeats in both symphonies, and the EMI sound is clear and spacious.'